• X-Trail is very family-friendly
• Generous space for five and luggage
• Third row of seats costs extra

Space offered inside the X-Trail impresses. There’s loads of room in the cabin and the doors open incredibly wide too – almost to 180 degrees, in fact – so it’s very easy to get in and out. The X-Trail is bigger than the previous versions.

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All five seats slide forwards and backwards by 26cm as well as reclining, which means you can optimise the interior configuration depending upon your requirements. Need space for larger adults in the rear? Slide the seats back. More boot space? Move them forwards.

You’ve got the appropriate number of cupholders and cubbies dotted around the interior and a good-sized glovebox to hide your possessions away.

While it’s a five-seat car out of the box, you can bolster Nissan X-Trail practicality via the addition of an extra two sliding and reclining seats situated in the boot. This is a £1,000 option but is likely to prove fairly popular since many buyers will order it ‘just in case’ to help on school runs and occasional forays with extra passengers.

They fold away flat, so you’ve got a useable boot if you don’t need all seven seats. It isn’t the most comfortable place to be sat in the rearmost row, though – taller passengers will feel cramped but it’s ideal for children or short hops. Those sat in the middle row will have to compromise on their legroom to fit them in too by sliding the bench forward. Just remember that you don’t get much bootspace at all with all three rows of seats erected.

The X-Trail is only slightly longer and wider than a Qashqai crossover, so it shouldn’t feel like too much of a lump to drive and manoeuvre. Various aids such as parking sensors and cameras will help when parking as well, so using the X-Trail around town won’t feel like you’re navigating a bus.

The boot is large at a maximum of 550 litres on pre-2017 facelift cars – it increased to 565 litres on revised 2018 model year car, thanks to a new, flatter plastic moulding liberating more space. Fold the rear seats flat and the bootspace swells to a cavernous 1996 litres and you can divide the rear backrest 60:40 to carry odd loads.

The loadbay has a clever feature as standard: a luggage board with nine different configurations, meaning you can vary the amount of space to keep objects from flying around the boot area. Look out also for electric tailgate operation, which takes a ponderous seven seconds; Nissan X-Trails built after August 2017 added a waggle-foot-to-open function – useful when your hands are full of shopping bags or children.

The optional Paw Pack is designed for dog owners in mind, with accessories in the boot to make life easier. This was based on the 4Dogs concept car, which you can read about by clicking on the picture below:

Safety

• Nissan X-Trail comes with 5-star safety rating
• Lots of standard kit to keep you safe
• Don’t need to pay extra for many safety features

In terms of crash testing, Nissan X-Trail safety has been awarded five stars by Euro NCAP. There’s a huge amount of safety kit on offer, both as part of trim levels and also available as optional extras.

Every X-Trail gets six airbags along with hill-start assist, tyre pressure monitors and a speed limiter. They also include Nissan Chassis Control, which uses the brakes to stabilise the car under various conditions such as undulating road surfaces or enthusiastic cornering in slippery conditions.

You also get stability and traction control systems as well as ABS and electronic brake force distribution. There are two Isofix child-seat attachments on the second row (the rearmost third row doesn’t have this function).

Features such as automatic lights, main beam headlights and wipers are available too depending on trim level, as are parking sensors and Nissan’s bird’s-eye-view 360-degree parking camera.

Other safety features on higher-spec cars include traffic sign recognition, autonomous emergency braking, lane departure and blindspot warning systems and keyless entry/start.

The 2017 facelift added a raft of extra safety functions, including: autonomous braking in emergencies which can now spot young children and animals straying into your path thanks to radar sensors; rear cross alert to warn if you’re about to reverse into traffic; and a hill-hold function on manual cars that’ll automatically apply the brakes for a few seconds when you stop on an incline.

From spring 2018, Nissan’s Pro Pilot will be offered on the X-Trail, bringing semi-autonomous features to let the car drive for you in certain, carefully prescribed conditions such as traffic jams or on well-marked highways.